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Reject cosmopolitanism and recover the promise of our republic, eh @HawleyMO. You mean as articulated by people from the founding era like Thomas Paine, the guy who wrote Common Sense and proudly called himself a "citizen of the world?"
@HawleyMO Or did you have in mind someone more like Benjamin Franklin, an internationally-known scientist who corresponded with people around the world and thoroughly enjoyed the years he spent frequenting the salons of Paris and the debating societies of London?
@HawleyMO Or was it Thomas Jefferson you had in mind, the connoisseur of fine French wine, correspondent with the leading European intellectuals of his day, architect who studied Greek history, and proud owner of a Koran?
@HawleyMO Or was it maybe James Madison, the guy who buried himself in his huge library of European works on political philosophy in preparation for attending the Constitutional Convention?
@HawleyMO Or maybe a lesser light like James Wilson of Pennsylvania whose close reading of the latest works of the Scottish Enlightenment informed his contributions to the Constitutional Convention?
@HawleyMO What follows are some cosmopolitan excerpts from Common Sense, arguably the text that was most influential in defining what the Patriot cause was about. So I guess to be a conservative now means to reject ideas like these on which the republic was founded?
"In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three hundred & sixty miles (the extent of England) and carry our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment." Paine, 1776
"It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the World." Paine, 1776
The last paragraph of Common Sense.
You should also check out this 1791 pamphlet by Robert Coram, a Revolutionary War veteran and school teacher who read over 50 books by European thinkers in preparation for writing this pamphlet. oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hyneman…
I wrote a biographical sketch of Coram in this book. He sailed around the Atlantic for years and wrote up the ideas he gleaned from these experiences. books.google.com/books/about/Re…
He edited a newspaper in Delaware in the 1790s which he filled with excerpts from the works of British radicals like William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. They were the parents of Mary Shelley, you might recognize her name from reading Frankenstein in high school.
And you do know, Rep. Hawley, that the first name on the Declaration of Independence was that of John Hancock, a man whose entire career was based on being an international merchant. Right? You knew that, right?
Here's an advertisement for books "just imported from London, Dublin, and Glasgow" that appeared in the conservative newspaper the Gazette of the United States on Jan 1, 1794. Such a provincial place early America was, eh?
Here's a transcription of Robert Coram's probate records, listing the books he owned when he died at the age of 35 in 1796. He also served as the town librarian in 1789-91, wch meant that he kept all of the library's books at his house. Coram's formal education ended at age 14.
These modern day conservatives like Hawley who claim to love the US and fetishize its founders yet seem to know not even the most basic facts about this history shouldn't surprise me anymore, yet it does.
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